Monsters of the Mind
by Blackbird0
Summary: There is nothing more terrifying than the fears you conjure in your own mind. No one knows this better than Yamanaka Kazue. Yamanaka!OC


Monsters of the Mind

**Chapter 1**

Yamanaka Kazue is a weepy, loud and angry baby. He runs his nanny off her feet trying to care for him, and the only time she gets any peace is when he is physically too exhausted to cry any longer. His parents are far too busy fighting in the Third Shinobi War to do much other than see him for few days at a time, before they have to go back to either long hours in T&I or months in the field. His first year is spent in a constant state of confusion, anxiety, and utter misery.

_(Yamanaka Kazue was once Darren Shultz – he once had a family, friends, a language that he understood, a place where he belonged. He knew the history of his people, had a country he was proud to be born into, a culture that he was raised with._

_He once had an entire world._

_This is not his world, he does not belong, will never belong, and he **hates** it.)_

The second year is better. His thoughts are more coherent, his understanding of the world sharper and no human can spend their entire life in fear. Unintelligible foreign language becomes somewhat familiar, helplessness is his new normal, and the sheer weakness of being unable to control his limbs loses its terror. Yamanaka Kazue is an adult in a baby's body, and nothing about this situation is alright. But there is also nothing he can do, so he sucks it up and stops screaming and starts observing his situation.

It's very easy to see that at not even two years old, his future is already decided. His blankets are embroidered with the Konoha leaf insignia, his stuffed animals are all wearing forehead protectors and his bed-time stories feature ninja killing the bad guys and saving the day.

Yamanaka Kazue is going to grow up as a child soldier and make a living with sabotage, torture, lies, murder, and violating the minds of others to get what the village wants.

Sure. Why not. Kazue cannot summon the ability to care about random strangers who never even warranted a mention in a childhood story. Why should he care about their lives when he cannot even care about himself? When everything that truly matters isn't even in this world anymore?

Yamanaka Kazue spends his second year of life as quiet as he was loud, doing nothing but watching with an apathetic ice-blue gaze.

_(His nanny is terrified of him. He behaves nothing like a child – what is a child even supposed to act like? She has never seen him laugh, never seen him play with toys, only take in his surroundings with that ever-watchful, emotionless stare. Kazue doesn't care about her either.)_

His third year in this world is when he finally spends time with the people who call themselves his parents, apart from the handful of hours they'd managed to squeeze into their busy schedules. The war has ended, and they've return scarred and exhausted, but alive, to see their toddler reading through a dense historical text about the Yamanaka Clan with a dictionary open beside him.

_(Being a baby is literally the most soul-destroying thing ever; it's like he's in solitary confinement in prison with no social interaction besides Flinching Nanny. He's had absolutely nothing to do but figure out how to read for an entire year, and if he'd had to stick to children's books, Kazue genuinely thinks he would have killed himself by now._

_He wouldn't have, really. What if his second death is worse?)_

His parents instantly realise something is wrong. How could they miss it? They dismiss his nanny and she is happy to leave, but this does not solve any of Kazue's issues. He is as abnormal as his ice-blue eyes – the only Yamanaka to have been born with a distinct pupil.

_(Eyes are the windows to the soul, and Darren Shultz looks out of Yamanaka Kazue's face with the Scandinavian light blue eyes he inherited from his grandmother. He has a pupil – what human being doesn't? _

_The Yamanaka Clan, that's who. Darren thinks it's ironic that the clan believes **him** to be the odd one out when he is the most human of them all.)_

Their only attempt at getting him to socialise with another child ends in disaster. His second cousin, Fuu, is two years older than him and very much a normal four, almost five-year-old child. Kazue ignores him in favour of his latest book on chakra, and only bestows him with a chilling glare when Fuu attempts to knock the book from his hands while trying to cajole him into playing tag. The playdate ends with Fuu in tears and Kazue unrepentantly glaring up at his caretakers.

_(Would any adult **want** to make friends with a four-year-old when they could be learning to manipulate nature instead? Yeah, he didn't think so.)_

The return of his parents also brings other revelations to Kazue. He didn't realise with Flinching Nanny, but every time he meets his parents' gaze, he gets flashes of this world's language, like mumbling, several decibels out of his hearing range. The more he focuses on the strange buzzing sound, the clearer and more distinct it becomes, until he can hear the words like they had been spoken aloud.

The three-year-old is sure they are not spoken aloud. Yamanaka Hina – to her credit – tries to be a good mother, but Kazue is entirely sure that good mothers don't comment about how unnatural their son's expressions are, even if it is entirely true. His father, Daichi, avoids him as best as he can, but his discomfort with him can be known even without reading his mind.

Chakra has a mental component. What do you think would happen if a baby Yamanaka spent his entire early childhood in complete bewilderment and fear, desperately wishing to understand what the giant who lurks above him is saying? For the impossible, foreign words to make sense, _begging_ for comprehension?

Something new, something never seen before.

* * *

Kazue blissfully doesn't remember the Kyuubi attack, having been knocked out entirely by the toxic chakra he felt when the fox was summoned into the village. He awakens two days later in the shelters with the rest of the clan's kids and goes straight back to reading his books when they are finally let out. He has no opinion of what has just happened apart from being glad he isn't old enough to be dragged in to help with the recovery effort.

He doesn't care that the Fourth Hokage is dead, and his son a new orphan, just as he doesn't care about anything else.

* * *

Kazue is four when he attends the Yamanaka Clan's celebration of their heiress' first birthday. It's the first time he's seen most of the clan together and is surprised by the number of people there. By his count, the Yamanaka number almost three hundred people, including those who have married in. The Yamanaka are meant to be a small clan in Konoha, meaning the larger ones – the Hyuuga and Uchiha – probably number in the thousands.

The celebration is noisy and warm – on the surface. In reality, people are still questioning Inoichi's decision to make his daughter his heir instead of trying for a son. The tables Kazue and his mother are seated at are based entirely upon Daichi's social standing in the clan, the wife and child viewed as mere extensions of him, and they go mostly ignore by the others of their branch of the family as they subtly brag about their lives and offspring.

Daichi and Hina are noticeably absent of such praise for him, which Kazue couldn't care less about, but seems to be a point of interest to their other relations.

Hina – she tries. Kazue isn't sure if its biology or sheer bull-headed stubbornness, but his mother has done her best to provide for him. She cooks for him, reminds him to eat and bathe when he gets lost in his studies, brings him books on whatever topic he has requested and she can get her hands on, and is the only one of his parents who will talk to him and answer his questions. Perhaps he's just desperate for any kind of social interaction after years alone, but his and Hina's discussions on chakra and jutsu are the highlight of his days.

She does her best to hide her discomfort at having such an intellectual discussion with a child and answers his questions honestly and as well as she can. Hina doesn't know everything; she's just a chuunin who specialises in genjutsu but has never been able to use it for more than support. But she's a person, she's made herself _real_ to him in a way that all other people aren't, and Kazue… has grown fond of her.

_(He cares. He cares a lot. He wishes he didn't; how much easier would it be to deal with losing everything if he didn't care?)_

So when one of his clansmen insinuates Kazue's unnaturalness is because of her bad parenting, he feels himself grow cold. And when Hina – who married into the clan and thus has little-to-no social standing – does nothing but clench her fists beneath the table, Kazue, for the first time in this life, gets angry.

"Yamanaka Hina is a good mother." Kazue's childish, but positively icy tone breaks into the conversation, halting the nearby ones due to the sheer unexpectedness of his intervention. He doesn't talk to people if he doesn't have to, has never been able bring himself to care enough about them to interact with them. Kazue still doesn't care about anyone else besides hurting the hypocrite sitting opposite him.

His blue eyes bore into the man, alit with a cold gleam. "She isn't a liar, unlike you."

The Hypocrite opened his mouth, face contorting with anger and condescension, but Kazue talks right over him.

"Does your wife know you fucked that redhead up against a fence this morning?"

The silence that descends upon the entire hall of ninja is deafening. The man he is intent on seeing punished has frozen in disbelief.

"She doesn't." He continued without a pause, his high-pitched voice carrying in the utterly noiseless room. "She's just found out she's pregnant and was waiting until she carried to term before she told you."

The woman beside the Hypocrite makes a choking sound, looking pallid and horrified, but Kazue doesn't pay her any mind. The younger Yamanaka's expression is merciless, a look that doesn't belong anywhere on a child's face.

"Does she know that you dream of brown eyes and a crooked smile, that your mistress asks how your wife is doing and you tell her she is as boring as always? That you like to tie her up and thrust into her until the bed is shaking and she _screams_ – "

"Kazue!"

Hina interrupts his visceral reveal of Hypocrite's sex-life, and a glance in her eyes tells him that she is stunned, embarrassed and horrified, but there is also joy, because he has just stood up for her, just proven that he _cares, _as well as a sliver of satisfaction buried beneath it all.

"As you wish, Kaa-san."

His mother clearly believes that the man has suffered enough, so Kazue loses interest, his cold fury slipping away as if it had never been there, apathy replacing it once more.

He picks his chopsticks up again and continues eating his dinner, eyes no longer hard and focused, but dull. The utensil's quiet clatter against his bowl is thunderous in the silent room. It is the woman who is married to the hypocrite who breaks the stunned immobility that has settled over everyone by shoving her chair back, wood scraping against the floor, and fleeing from the room.


End file.
